Production document scanning is typically carried out using Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) based scanners with dedicated input and output trays, as shown in FIG. 1. An ADF scanner typically employs a stacked sheet separator mechanism which is generally a torque limited retard roller 102 and/or frictional pad which applies an opposing force to selectively separate the top sheet intended to be imaged from the remainder of a stack of documents to be separated and imaged sequentially top-down. Typically there is an elevator mechanism 103 which raise the tray supporting the input stack of documents 101 from which the separator mechanism removes the top sheet. This elevator maintains the optimal separation geometry between the document stack and the separation mechanism. The separated documents are transported by friction nip rollers past CCD line capture imagers, and the information on each sheet of the two sided document is rendered as a typical digital image file (JPEG, TIFF etc.) processed to have a good visual appearance and optimized for post processing like Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The imaged documents are deposited in an output tray 104 where they are manually removed by a dedicated human operator 105. Typically a dedicated operator is required to run this type of device, with one operator per machine.
The typical prior art scanning operation employs a number of traditional ADF scanners 9 (as described in FIG. 1) and is depicted in FIG. 2. A user may wish to scan unsorted documents 201. Human input 205 may be used 202 to sort document stacks into sorted document stacks 203-204. The documents may be manually transported 207 to document scanners 209 and 210 where manual intervention 208 is required to scan the documents. Documents are then manually transported 211 for archive 212 or disposal 213. Manual operators 214 may examine digital images of scanned documents to determine whether a rescan is necessary. If no rescan is necessary, the digital images are stored as customer data 215.
As more capacity is required in traditional scanning operations, more scanners are added with additional operators 8. Scaling the operation as it grows is expensive, and therefore is employed until a higher capacity scanner is available. In a large scanning operation, there would be many scanner-operator pairs 10. The scanners used in these traditional scanning operations are typically large and expensive, and require additional and expensive personnel, referred to as Doc Prep operators 5, to prepare the documents for scanning.
There are typically 2-4 Doc Prep operators 5 required to maintain an adequate flow of documents for a 200-250 page per minute scanner. Unorganized documents 1 are manipulated 2 by the Doc Prep personnel 5 with the main output of their efforts 3, 4 being batches of documents in a format that can be handled efficiently by the scanner operator and fed reliably through the document scanning equipment 8, 9. This manipulation includes removing document sheets from containers (boxes, envelopes and folders), removing binding means (staples, paper clips etc.), flattening wrinkled or folded pages, classifying for optimal scanning settings (color imaging, grayscale imaging, black and white imaging, and image capture resolution), organizing as batches to maintain resultant data as adjacent records, and limiting the stack size to the number of sheets which can be handled by the scanners input elevator.
Document preparation steps vary by scanner operation and also depend on end customer requirements. Upon completion of a document preparation operation, the individual document sheets making up a prepared batch have their lead edges, the initial edge that enters the scanner separation mechanism 102, aligned. This aligned edge is perpendicular to the direction of transport of the separated sheets as they move through the scanner. Each document sheet in a batch must have a center line which is perpendicular to the lead edge, and aligned with the center line of the scanner separation mechanism 102. This alignment allows batches of documents of varying sizes to be reliably separated, transported and imaged. If this were not done, smaller documents intermixed with larger documents would not be separated reliably and may not be transported until the next larger lead edge aligned sheet was separated. This is referred to as a multi feed. The resultant batches as prepared by the Doc Prep personnel are referred to as scanner ready stacks.
When a number of scanner ready stacks are available at a document preparation location they are moved manually from the document preparation area to a scanner area, typically by hand cart, to the input queue of a designated scanner operator. A given scanner operator takes un-scanned prepped documents from the input queue in sequence, places them in the input tray of the document scanner, initiates the scanning. Once scanned, the documents are removed from the output tray by the operator and placed in a scanned document holding location. The digitized images from that scanner ready stack are reviewed by a quality control (QC) operator, which can be the scanner operator but many times is a dedicated QC operator. If it is done by the scanner operator, the scan operation is slowed down and efficiency of the scanning operation is reduced. If there are images in the batch detected as part of QC that require the original to be re scanned, the scanner operator must go find that batch and reprocess it, possibly with more aggressive image processing settings to extract more image data. Once a given number of scanned batches are cleared through the QC process, the scanned documents are transported to either an archive to be stored or, after customer approval, to a certified document destruction operation for final disposal.
What is needed is a system and method to increase the efficiency of large scale scanning operations, while reducing costs and operator intervention.